Spring term
The Dene
We had so much fun in the Dene with Gillian and Andrea. We found out about some of the common plants in our local area like nettles, buttercups, dandelions, cleavers (Sticky Jack), ground elder, cow parsley, hawthorn and holly. We know that some plants were used for medicinal purposes in the past and some still are today. We found out about some of the poisonous plants, like ivy, which we should leave alone and we enjoyed smelling the fresh, wild garlic growing in the Dene. We have a small collection of leaves in our classroom to look at from our trip.
'Come and See' morning
Thank you to all our parents and careers who managed to attend our open morning today. We had lots of fun putting ourselves in the shoes of Christopher Columbus. We considered what a stormy night at sea may have been like for Columbus and we wrote a diary entry to describe a dramatic night on the ship.
Who's been eating my porridge?
We had lots of fun following instructions to make porridge this week after reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We added honey or jam to the porridge which was delicious!
World Book Day 2019
We had so much fun today in our costumes. We read the story of 'Little Red Riding Hood' and dramatised our favourite scenes. We then talked about lots of different fairy tales which we know and love and we practised speaking in character using puppets. We also collaged a large Giant for display in our classroom after reading 'Jack and the Beanstalk' and we have used exciting words to describe our favourite characters from a range of fairy tales.
Wild Words Workshop
Today we met Oscar from the RSPB who took us on a journey around school to find different kinds of mini beasts. We found spiders, worms, woodlice and even a centipede! We also listened to the calling of several different birds which live around our school grounds. We used magnifying glasses to make the tiny creatures look gigantic and we compared many different animals, describing some as giant-sized compared to others. We used scientific words like 'prey', 'predator', 'hunt', 'diet' and 'habitat'. We also recorded lots of descriptive phrases to describe the habitats we found. Oscar knows so much about nature! We loved hearing his stories and sharing our knowledge of nature with him- he was very impressed with our understanding of the world around us.
Art Week
Day Four
Today we imagined what it would be like to be a passenger on one of the ships we have studied. We decided to draw what a passenger might have seen through the portholes of the ship as they were arriving at the docks. We used all of our knowledge of the artwork we have studied to create lovely colourful scenes displayed in portholes.
Wow! We have finished our art work and we are so proud of it. We are so excited that our work will be displayed in the school hall. We have a had lots of fun this week learning about ships, shipyards in the Newcastle area, cargo, passengers, workers and many more things related to the ship industry in the 20th century. We have loved being history detectives finding clues to the past through studying various pieces of art.
Art Week
Day Three
Today we thought carefully about the display we wanted to create in school. We decided that we would like to create ships that we could paint and collage. We used art straws, buttons, mosaic tiles, sticky-back shapes, pasta shapes and lots more! Next, we wanted to try out a new technique for the ocean; we created a marbling effect on paper using shaving foam and food colouring- it was so much fun! You can see our ships and our marbling below. We also used construction toys to build ships which we enjoyed.
Art Week
Day Two
Look at the scale of the ship!
Today we learned how large some ships are by not only studying the 'Men of the Docks' painting again but by also studying photographs of shipyards in the Newcastle area by Chris Killip. We are astounded by their size and we can't wait to follow our interests of ships for the rest of Art Week.
Today, we sketched ships which we are super proud of. It was difficult at first trying to get the shape right, but with a little guidance and through studying sketches by other artists, we did it!
Art Week
Day One
Today we studied the painting by George Bellows called 'Men of the Docks'. We used viewfinders to look more closely at different sections of the painting then we talked about which subjects we could identify in the scene. We are keen to find out more about the painting over the next few days.
Yoga Bugs
We had a great time today at Yoga Bugs as we 'flew' to Africa to meet with lots of different animals. We learned new yoga poses and we improved our balance and our core strength with help from our instructor.
Coding
We had a great time this morning with Mr Vyle learning all about coding. We used code.org to write our algorithms. We loved our session in the computer suite!
Our World
We have really enjoyed our topic work this half term on hot and cold places in our wonderful world. We can now name and recognise all seven continents and we know which places are the coldest and which are the hottest in our world. We have learned about lots of different animals from hot and cold places. Our favourite animals to study were polar bears and beluga whales. Why don't you ask us what we know about them? We have also thought carefully about how some animals have adapted to their environments and how they would find it difficult to survive in an opposite climate using characters like Sunny from the story of 'Meerkat Mail' by Emily Gravett.
Come and See
We had a great morning today showing off our phonic skills to our parents and carers. We demonstrated how we learn to read and spell with heaps of confidence and we challenged our grown-ups to complete lots of phonic-based activites with us. We also had the opportunity to show what we know about hot and cold climates in our world. We extended our knowledge today to sort animals into those that live in hot places and those which live in cold places. Our visitors were very impressed with us today!
Partner up!
We had a super afternoon pairing up with different friends in the classroom to promote collaboration and cooperation which we know are life-long skills that we will need to develop as we grow older. We generated partners through finding the other half to our patterned love heart. Then we completed activities like 'mirroring' to ensure we worked effectively together. We had a great time and some of us felt so confident that we demonstrated our collaborative work to the rest of the class.
We're not going on a bear hunt anymore!
This week, after completing lots of activities around the story, 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' by Michael Rosen, we decided to write a letter to the bear in the cave. We wondered if the bear might be feeling a little lonely and whether he might wish he had a few friends to play with. We think the bear might not be that scary after all. We're not going on a bear hunt anymore!
Spellings Stars
This week we had our first set of spellings to learn in preparation for a test. We did so well as a class that we won the spellings trophy for the week - our score beat all the other classes in school! We can't wait to see if we can win the trophy again!
Our trip to the Theatre Royal
What a fantastic start to a new term! The most exciting part of our week was being taking to the pantomime at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle to watch 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears'. We sat upstairs in the Grand Circle and looked down onto the stage where we were thoroughly entertained all afternoon. We had so much fun that some of us fell asleep on the coach on the way back to school- we were exhausted from all the giggles and laughter!
